Opting-in to plugins in Firefox

Whether you hate them or love them, content accessed through plugins is still a sizable chunk of the web. So much so, that over 99% of internet users have Flash installed on their browser. However, plugins can also carry with them extra vulnerabilities and system slowdowns.

A couple days ago I landed an initial implementation of “click-to-play plugins” in desktop Firefox. To see and play with the feature, download a Nightly build of Firefox, go to about:config, and enable the plugins.click_to_play flag.

When plugins.click_to_play is enabled, plugins will require an extra click to activate and start “playing” content. This is an incremental step towards securing our users, reducing memory usage, and opening up the web.

That is in discussion now, and it is the likely direction we’ll go. We would probably implement it such that enabling a visible plugin enables that plugin and any other invisible plugins on the page (for compatibility reasons), but not enable other visible plugins.

msujaws :
That is in discussion now, and it is the likely direction we’ll go. We would probably implement it such that enabling a visible plugin enables that plugin and any other invisible plugins on the page (for compatibility reasons), but not enable other visible plugins.

Sensible compromise. Personally, I would appreciate being able to customise that so that hidden plugins also stay unloaded.

Have to say well done Jared! It’s clear that it’s going to take a lot to keep the majority of people happy with this, yet you’re taking it in stride. Keep it up champ!